Various vehicle manufacturers and safety organizations have performed studies of seatbelt usage in vehicles, and these studies have confirmed that vehicle occupants wearing seatbelts are generally safer and better protected in the event of a crash than those who do not wear seatbelts. As a result, a number of public awareness campaigns have been launched to encourage the use of seatbelts in vehicles, and most jurisdictions have actually enacted seatbelt laws to mandate such use. Even still, in vehicle crash situations, a significant number of preventable fatalities and serious injuries occur each year as a result of the failure of vehicle occupants to properly wear their seatbelts.
Current vehicle safety systems only provide a light and/or sound indicator within the interior seating compartment of the vehicle, with this indicator serving only to notify the occupants as to whether the seatbelts are buckled. Current designs of vehicle safety systems do not provide seatbelt warning signals that may be readily perceived by those situated substantially exterior relative to the interior seating compartment of the vehicle. As such, law enforcement officials and the like are faced with the often difficult and error-prone task of performing quick visual checks of seatbelt shoulder harnesses to ascertain whether each occupant in each passing vehicle is properly buckled in.
It should also be noted that a number of current vehicles are provided with event data recorders that record a variety of data following a vehicle crash event—such data including whether a driver seatbelt and/or a front passenger seatbelt was buckled at the time of the vehicle crash event. Current event data recorders, however, do not provide a permanent record of seatbelt usage—in vehicle crash events and otherwise—that is capable of identifying each and every time a particular seat assembly was occupied and whether the associated seatbelt assembly was then unfastened, improperly fastened, and/or properly fastened.
That is, none of the current designs of vehicle safety systems and event data recorders provide an integrated and readily ascertainable seatbelt warning signal substantially exterior of the interior seating compartment of the vehicle in conditions where a seat assembly is occupied but the associated seatbelt assembly is either in an unfastened or improperly fastened configuration. Conversely, none of the current designs of vehicle safety systems and event data recorders provide an integrated and readily ascertainable seatbelt approved signal substantially exterior of the interior seating compartment of the vehicle in conditions where a seat assembly is occupied and the associated seatbelt assembly is in a properly fastened configuration.
In order to increase occupant use and wearing of seatbelts, what is needed is an integrated seatbelt usage sensing apparatus that generates and transmits a readily ascertainable seatbelt warning signal substantially exterior of the interior seating compartment of the vehicle in conditions where the seat assembly is occupied but the associated seatbelt assembly is either in an unfastened or improperly fastened configuration. The seatbelt warning signal would ideally be a readily observable exterior light and/or frequency indicator. Such a system should also provide a permanent data log of seat belt usage by the occupants of the vehicle.
It is, therefore, one object of the present invention to provide a seatbelt usage sensing apparatus that generates and transmits a seatbelt warning signal substantially exterior of the interior seating compartment of the vehicle when a seat assembly is occupied and an associated seatbelt assembly is in an unfastened configuration.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a seatbelt usage sensing apparatus that generates and transmits a seatbelt warning signal substantially exterior of the interior seating compartment of the vehicle when a seat assembly is occupied and an associated seatbelt assembly is in an improperly fastened configuration.
It is a further object of the present invention to generate and transmit a seatbelt warning signal that may be readily observed and ascertained substantially exterior to an interior seating compartment of the vehicle.
It is a further object of the present invention to generate and transmit the seatbelt warning signal only when the seat assembly is occupied by a body or seat occupant having a weight in excess of a predetermined threshold value.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a seatbelt usage sensing apparatus that possesses means to reduce potential circumvention by vehicle occupants in generating and transmitting the seatbelt warning signal.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a seatbelt usage sensing apparatus that possesses occupant responsive means to reduce potential circumvention by vehicle occupants in generating and transmitting the seatbelt warning signal.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a seatbelt usage sensing apparatus that enables permanent recording of seatbelt usage information.
It is yet still another object of the present invention to provide a seatbelt usage sensing apparatus that enables permanent recording of seat identification and time and date signature data for each seatbelt warning signal.
It is a yet still further object of the present invention to provide a seatbelt usage sensing apparatus that enables remote recording of seatbelt usage information.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a seatbelt usage sensing apparatus that enables remote identification of the vehicle transmitting each seatbelt warning signal.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a seatbelt usage sensing apparatus that generates and transmits a seatbelt approved signal substantially exterior of the interior seating compartment of the vehicle when the seat assembly is occupied and the associated seatbelt assembly is in a properly fastened configuration.